If You're Happy and You Know It
by starcrosslane
Summary: Happy Hogan may not exactly be the cool uncle, but he tries his best. A collection of moments in which Happy looks after the kid his boss/best friend accidentally acquired and who Happy himself would definitely not/maybe/absolutely would fight a Titan for.
1. Share Your Shades

The kid was late.

Happy swiveled in the leather of the driver's seat for the fourth time in five minutes, scanning the school's front steps for any sign of Peter. The stream of teenagers that poured out of the double doors at 2:45 had long since dwindled down to scattered stragglers and clusters of kids loitering along the walls, but Peter was nowhere to be found.

Happy scowled. It wasn't like him. Short of lizard beasts invading the halls or some other spandex-y emergency, the kid was never late to the lab dates that made up his official internship. Never. If anything, he was usually bouncing on his heels at the edge of the curb by the time Happy inched through the pick-up line to collect him. His absence was ominous enough to make even a seasoned superhero babysitter (Pepper's words, not his) like Happy a little uneasy.

After checking his phone for the barrages of texts or voicemails the kid liked to leave, but finding none, Happy heaved a sigh. He shut off the Audi, shoved his sunglasses a bit higher on the bridge of his nose, and stepped out into the blinding afternoon sun, inwardly grumbling all the way. When these little outings began, he had spent plenty of time grousing to Tony about how this business of ferrying a far-too-cheerful child around the city was far, far below his paygrade. He still stood by that argument, even if it wasn't a job he minded too much three months in.

Still, being forced to venture _inside_ the grungy halls of a high school-even one as smart and stuffy as Midtown-was pushing it.

One half of the double doors flung open half a second before Happy reached it, nearly catching him in the stomach as he reached for it. He let out a curse, and caught the door on the backswing, ready to unleash his aggravation on whatever idiot had tried to clothesline him with a grimy piece of school architecture...only to freeze at the sight of the figures shuffling through the portal.

"What's wrong with you?"

"Shhh!" Happy blinked, then glowered as Peter's friend—Fred? Ted? Ned—Ned gave him a reproachful shake of the head and tightened the arm he was apparently using to keep a boneless Peter from toppling over.

"Did you just shush me? What's going o-"

"_Shhhh."_ The hissing was more urgent then, as the pair of them staggered over the threshold and into the light. Peter let out a muffled groan, silencing Happy a lot faster than any shush ever would, if only because the kid never complained about anything physical. Whining about Tony's dumb protocol names? Sure. Joining him in heckling the inconsiderate drivers they shared Queens Boulevard with? All the time. But there was never a peep about the bruises he saw after hard nights on the street or the tell-tale scrapes and scratches left by webslinging wipeouts. If Peter couldn't hold in his discomfort, something was truly, horribly wrong. "You have to whisper; it's his ears."

Not just his ears, if the way Peter screwed his eyes shut against the afternoon glare and wobbled to and fro in Ned's grip were any indication. Happy felt the familiar panic of stumbling into something absurd and unreal and way beyond his job description; he pursed his lips. Story of his life, at this point.

"It happens sometimes, when he gets stressed out or beat up or something and his senses get all wonky," Ned kept whispering as he towed Peter gently outside with the practiced ease of a kid who'd probably seen it all in the way of weird spider things by this point. Happy could sympathize. "Says it's like a migraine dialed up to eleven."

"Huh." Happy sighed and whipped off his sunglasses to settle them on Peter's face, eliciting a flinch from the sudden touch, but a marked slump of his tense shoulders at the respite from the light. It wasn't a perfect fix—and heaven help the kid if he didn't return the shades in one piece—but it would help until Happy could deliver him to Tony for a more high-tech solution. Ned had apparently had the same idea since Peter was already wearing a set of bulky headphones perched over his ears, on top of the earbud wires that snaked down to his collar. Between the sunglasses, two sets of headphones, and the soft ride and tinted windows of a well-maintained Audi, Happy hoped the kid would look less peaked by the time he made that delivery...Tony would have a conniption if he dropped off the pale, shaky kid he was currently looking at. Nor, frankly, was it good for Happy's heart condition, either.

"C'mon, let's get you in the car." Happy rested one hand on the back of Peter's neck and the other on the arm Ned hadn't already claimed to steer him expertly down the walk. And if he whispered like a nanny at naptime, well...how he did his job was no one's business but his.

It was...a process...bundling the kid into the backseat. Even with both Happy and Ned doing all the heavy lifting (not that the kid was heavy-if anything, he was too scrawny for someone who did so much running around on rooftops), it took a solid five minutes and a lot of exasperated whisper-shouts to make sure all the gangly limbs were pointing the right direction. Happy jammed the seatbelt into its buckle with a resounding click. Ned settled Peter's backpack of the week gently between his feet, and stepped back with a relieved sigh when his friend flashed him a wobbly farewell smile.

"Thanks, Mr. Hogan," Ned said as Happy eased the door shut as quietly as he could manage. "Can you...uh...can you text me when Peter's okay?"

Happy shot the kid a look as he rounded the car. What was he, a secretary as well as a chauffeur? Ned grimaced.

"Yeah, you're right, Peter'll do it when he can."

"Bingo." Happy paused with his hand on the door handle and ground his teeth. Tony was right. He was going soft in his old age. "You…uh…you did good lookin' after him."

Ned beamed, straightening like he'd been handed a medal and launching into a stream of chatter that Happy would've been forced to endure if he hadn't slid in and pulled the door shut behind him. He supposed superhero babysitters did have to stick together to a point—it was a pretty small field, after all—but Happy had his limits.

"Hey, Happy?"

Happy startled at the weak voice from the backseat, but he didn't chance a peek in the rearview mirror until he had fired off a heads-up to Tony and pulled safely out into the afternoon traffic. He winced when he did. Peter was listing sideways, held up by the pull of his seatbelt across his chest while Happy's too-large sunglasses slid precariously down his nose. Not for the first time, Happy found himself grateful he wasn't one of the poor saps stuck with superhuman anything. It was just a shame the kid was.

"Yeah, kid?" He kept his voice soft and his hands well-off the horn that was usually his best friend in Queens traffic.

"Thanks," Peter rasped. He grinned shakily as he pushed the sunglasses back up to their proper place. He looked a little better here, away from the pervasive stink of locker rooms and chem labs and shielded from as much light and sound as possible, but Happy still didn't like the gray tint of his face or the forced quality of his smile. "The glasses are cool."

"Yeah, they are, and I want 'em back without a scratch. You hear me, Parker?"

"That's kinda the problem..." Peter snickered, cutting off abruptly with a soft "ow." Happy rolled his eyes and turned back to the road.

"Shut your mouth and rest up. I'm gonna sic Tony on you when we get there; he'll get you fixed up."

He always did. There wasn't much that man couldn't solve with enough time and tech. Happy would bet that dampening a set of overzealous senses would take twenty minutes on the outside. Particularly since _his_ kid was the one suffering in the meantime.

Peter let out a resigned groan—it wasn't his first time having Tony sicced on him for one thing or another—but tipped his head back to rest against the soft leather all the same. Happy gave a satisfied nod to no one in particular and turned back to the road again. He considered raising the partition between front and back seats to block out more of the engine noise, but decided against it. Keeping a watchful eye on the kid would be easier without it. And what was his job, if not keeping a watchful eye out for his people?

Soft snores carried up front twenty minutes into the ride, and Happy felt his own shoulders relax a little with the sound. If the kid was sleeping, things had to be at least a little better. Of course, that raised the issue of whether or not Happy would be able to wake him up when they got to the compound—kid slept like the dead—or whether he would have to be carried inside. If so, Happy was tapping out. Tony could do it. Babysitting was one thing, but kid-carrying was another, and Happy wasn't paid enough.

He snuck another glance at the backseat, at Peter's small form curled into a defensive ball of too many curls and headphones and badly hidden patrol bruises. It was his turn to let out a resigned sigh. He wasn't paid enough to share his shades, either, and here he was. Such was his life.

…Not that he would trade it.

Not for anything.


	2. Put 'em Up

"Look, man, this really isn't a good idea..."

"C'mon, put your gloves on."

"Happy, I _can't_ box with you, I can bench, like, twenty-thousand pounds! If I don't pull my punches enough or miss a shot or something—"

Happy kept lacing his gloves, steadfastly ignoring Peter's uneasy fidgeting at the edge of the ring that occupied one corner of Tony's gym. It was weird seeing him decked out in the gloves and the protective gear and the shorts (the _shorts_…Ned would never believe it) that had materialized from God knew where the minute the older man had decided they were going to spar. Peter had known in some distant corner of his mind that Happy hadn't sprung into existence with the trademark black suit and bodyguard glare, but the idea of him having had this whole past career before Tony just...didn't mesh with Peter's reality.

"How's sparring with me any different than your patrols? You gotta be pulling your punches then, too, if you haven't punched anybody through a wall yet."

"Well, yeah," Peter edged towards the ropes in a bid for escape. Happy's eyes narrowed and an impressive harrumph brought Peter sulking back towards the center of the canvas. "But I mostly just...web and go, you know? I don't get in a lot of actual fist fights."

"Yeah, and that's why you keep losing 'em when you do," Happy said firmly, jerking his head towards the offending black eye Peter had slid into the car with an hour earlier. "If you want to keep doing this, you gotta get better with the technique. Can't always just muscle your way through stuff."

Peter shot a desperate glance across the room at Tony, where the older man was using a weight machine as an easy chair rather doing the reps Happy had recommended he do to "stay busy and don't distract the kid" when they had trooped here rather than following the usual route to the lab. Tony lifted his hands in a helpless shrug, smirking all the while. _What do you want me to do about it?_ Peter rolled his eyes. Typical.

He supposed he shouldn't have been surprised...Tony hadn't exactly protested this little foray, either. One look at the ring of mottled blue and purple painted beneath Peter's eye from an ill-fated encounter with what might or might not have been a _freaking ninja_ and half a minute's worth of Peter's attempt to explain it away, and Tony was already seconding Happy's motion that self-defense lessons should be added to the "internship" roster. Peter had dismissed it as just another of Tony's passing fancies, a joke that would soon be brushed off in favor of their comfortable lab-and-dinner routine. Instead, here he was in borrowed sweats and enormous gloves that made his hands feel too heavy and slow for any real action.

Not that he really minded that part. The idea of sparring with someone he not only knew, but whose punches couldn't even begin to match up to his already made him a little queasy. Still, Happy wasn't an easy man to argue with, especially when he was worried. Peter hadn't missed the tinge of concern in the older man's eyes when he first caught sight of the bruises or the fretting hidden beneath his bluster when he demanded to know what Peter had done to himself. That, along with the fact that Happy was willingly giving up the few quiet hours during which Peter and Tony were always too busy with the wonders of the lab to bother him spoke volumes.

Peter wasn't sure whether to be touched or annoyed.

"First rule: don't take your eyes off your opponent," Happy's voice drew Peter's attention back to the ring just in time to see Happy's glove coming in before it bopped him gently on the side of the head. Peter scowled and sidestepped away, bouncing on the heels of his feet in a lighter, faster imitation of Happy's footwork.

"But I don't need to actually _see_ anything—Spidey-sense, remember?"

"Still can't believe you're actually calling it that," Tony piped up from behind the phone he'd aimed their direction. Peter's frown deepened. Was he..._recording?_ Rude. He'd invited himself along for the spectacle under the guise of "supervising," but Peter suspected that blackmail material collection was a slightly higher priority.

"Whatever you call it, it didn't stop me getting you just now, did it?" Happy jabbed at him again, sharper and more focused now that Peter was paying attention. "Keep your eyes open, kid."

Peter ducked easily and bounded out of reach. Happy kept coming, tracking him steadily around the ring in an unrelenting chase. Peter wondered if that had been his strategy when he boxed professionally: chasing his opponents down until they wore themselves out. Peter threw a few half-hearted punches in return, clipping Happy's chestguard twice, but garnering more than a few comments about the way he held his wrists and his lack of proper follow-through. Happy's strikes held little more force than Peter's, a fact that drew a steady stream of sputtered protests from Tony about how unfair it was in comparison to his own sparring sessions. Peter couldn't help feeling at least a little bit smug that he warranted special treatment...even if he _was_ objectively much more capable of taking a punch. Happy didn't seem to have it in him to really let him take a real hit.

"You gotta use your eyes, not close 'em, even when it looks like you're about to take a punch." The instructions came so rapid-fire that Peter began to wonder if he should be taking notes. There were so many tiny adjustments and new rules he'd never heard of that he doubted he'd remember them all. "Keep your gloves up; you can't fight if you aren't ready."

It was harder than Peter expected to divide his attention between restricting his strength and listening to Happy's running dialogue. Because he _was_ listening. The fact that Happy kept sneaking in a blow here or a tap there—light as they may have been—despite Peter's speed and senses made it painfully clear that maybe he could use a little more formal training. Sure, he wasn't exactly trying his hardest now, but it felt like he'd gotten his butt handed to him more than usual lately. A scuffle with a gang of muggers had left him with three cracked ribs the previous week and a brawl with an apparent octopus-man the week before that had ended with more bruises than Peter cared to admit. He usually won by the time all was said and done, but he wasn't going to turn down a chance to pick up a few more tricks of the trade.

And tricks they certainly were once Happy moved past the traditional blocks and feints and strikes to outline a succession of moves that Peter was sure he'd seen before, but definitely not from a professional. He dutifully watched Happy go through the motions of kidney shots and rabbit punches and low blows that made him wince as he imagined how that would feel if it landed on flesh rather than empty air. He couldn't help feeling a bit incredulous that Happy was actually passing along this particular kind of boxing lore.

"Hey, Happy? Isn't that—" Peter dropped out of reach of a wide haymaker when they moved back into sparring, cutting Happy off as the man described a particularly brutal strike that could be aimed at the nether regions. "Isn't that kinda fighting dirty?"

Happy paused as they both withdrew a few steps, panting more heavily than Peter was, but clearly not finished. He sobered, eyes straying up Peter's face to focus on the black eye again.

"It is—and don't you ever let me hear about you using any of that in a ring, if you ever pick up the hobby or something—but...if someone's trying to kill you, kid, you use everything you can, got it?"

His tone stayed as gruff and impatient as ever, but something about the emphasis with which he shook his glove in Peter's direction and the ferocity in his eyes made Peter nod back just as fiercely. He'd seen the same look on Aunt May's face when she bombarded him with first aid tips and stern warnings about injuries gone bad that she had witnessed firsthand during her shifts at the hospital. There wasn't much she could give him to keep him safe when he ventured out onto the streets—not like Tony with his suit upgrades and promises of back-up—but she gave all she had, even if it was only advice. Happy didn't have much to protect him with, either, but if the way he brushed the sweat out of his eyes, squared his shoulders, and demanded they go again was any example, that wasn't going to stop him from trying. Peter tamped down a grin and raised his gloves again. He hadn't originally believed Tony when he claimed Happy was just a collection of soft spots masquerading as a tough guy, let alone that one of said soft spots had his name on it these days. And yet here they were.

"Hey, Happy?"

"That's another thing, you can't keep talking this much when you fight. You got any idea how distracting that is?"

"Thanks for doing this."

"Yeah, yeah..." Happy's face softened a fraction. "Just don't come in here with any more black eyes."

It was as close to a "be careful" as he was likely to get, Peter supposed. And, stoic as it was, it was a far cry from the ignored texts and dismissive phone calls a year earlier. Peter grinned as Happy stepped forward to launch into the next bout. He would take what he could get.


	3. Lend a Hand

"Hey, kid, pack it in! It's time to go!"

It was late, Happy was tired, and he wasn't going to trek down the frankly ridiculous flight of stairs that led to the compound's lab sublevel if standing at the head of the stairs and hollering would do the trick. Though Tony had been called away for some emergency meeting Pepper insisted he couldn't miss, he had left Peter to finish the evening in the lab on his own. With the understanding that Happy would keep an eye on him (sort of—watching Downton Abbey on the big screen one floor away still counted) and drive him home at the usual time, of course.

But, as things so often did with the kid, the plan seemed to be dissolving. It was 8:00 on the dot, and Peter had yet to emerge. He _knew_ Happy didn't appreciate being kept waiting. Surely the kid wasn't stupid enough to do it intentionally.

"Kid! Car leaves in five, and you better be in it!"

The stairwell remained still and silent and irritatingly empty. Happy scowled. Of course the kid had to pick up that one of Tony's habits. It was bad enough that Happy spent so much time prying one hyperfocused genius away from his toys, let alone a second, smaller version. He rolled his eyes and stomped below to retrieve Junior. Those two never made it easy.

"WaaAAIT!" A high-pitched yell drew him up short before he cleared the middle of the staircase. Happy froze, tensing for trouble out of habit, even though nothing too world-shaking seemed likely in the middle of one of the most secure buildings on the east coast. "Don't come down yet!"

Happy let out an indignant huff and strode down the rest of the way. It could be hard to pin down exactly what was happening when Peter's voice went shrill and squeaky, but it nearly always boiled down to panic or embarrassment, and Happy didn't have time for either one tonight. "Why not? You're already late!"

"Uh...no reason, I just...uh...didn't want you to have to come all the way down here, so why don't you just go back up..." Peter trailed off as Happy rounded the corner of the stairwell and paused, dumbfounded, in the doorway."...stairs."

"Kid. What the _he_—"

"Hey, Happy," Peter flashed a weak smile from he stood between two worktables, balanced on one leg while the other was encased in a cascade of what appeared to be failed web fluid that overflowed from one beaker and tumbled down the side of the table to pile up in a sticky mountain of goo.

"Don't 'hey, Happy' me—what did you do?" Happy advanced far enough for a closer look at the chaos, but kept a generous perimeter between himself and the mess. Just in case. "You okay?"

"Yeah, just stuck." Peter sighed and gave his trapped leg a futile shake to demonstrate. The webbing barely budged. "My ratios were a little off. I dropped in the catalyst, and then it just—" His hands flailed in an approximation of exploding web goop. "—went everywhere."

It was Happy's turn to sigh as he surveyed the disaster and fervently hoped it wouldn't still be there when Tony next set foot in the place. "You better be able to clean this up, kid."

"I can, I can—I just couldn't reach all the stuff I needed to mix up the solvent," Peter said, rushing through the words to point at a second beaker sitting next to the first, this one only half-full of clear liquid. Happy eyed it suspiciously, imagining a second geyser of goo. "Can you hand me that vial? That's the last one I need."

"You sure you know what you're doing?"

"Dude. I would've been out of here an hour ago if I could've reached that; I totally know what I'm doing." Peter shot him an offended glare, a fact that seemed a little ironic coming from a kid buried up to his ankles in his own mistake. Happy rolled his eyes and crossed to the worktable the kid had been straining to reach when he came in.

"You been stuck like that for an hour?" He reached for the nearest of the vials scattered amongst the worktable's array of equipment and supplies, then shifted to the next one over when Peter shook his head. There was a faint twinge of sympathy in the back of his head at that. It was entirely the kid's fault, no doubt about it, but he still hated to think of him struggling and straining against a captured leg for a full hour. "You shoulda called me."

"Well, I would have, but my phone's kinda...unreachable." Peter jerked a sheepish thumb at the fluid-covered section of the floor. "Dropped it when the beaker went exploded."

"Why were you holding it when you were pouring chemicals?" Happy demanded, incredulous, as he handed over the vial and watched Peter set to work measuring out the appropriate amount. He knew very little about lab procedures (by choice), but even he knew that had to be violating a few safety protocols.

"I...uh...I might've gotten a call—a really important call, so don't judge me!—and I was already in the middle of combining the catalyst, so I tried to do both and...yeah." Peter's ears turned steadily redder with each word. Happy's eyes narrowed.

"You're a child, you don't get important calls. Who was it?"

"I get calls from you; are you saying _your_ phone calls aren't important? And from Mr. Stark. His calls are definitely important, so—"

"Peter!"

Peter grimaced and finished tipping a cylinder's worth of whatever the vial contained into the solvent. It fizzed softly, the color brightening to a faint gray. Peter gave it a satisfied nod before scooping it up to drizzle the mixture over the web goop mountain.

"It was MJ. From school. She...ah...she never actually calls me, so I really wanted to pick up."

"That the girl you and your buddy are always with?" Happy took a precautionary step back as the web fluid began to hiss and shift. He'd seen the trio a time or two when he arrived at Midtown to collect Peter for the twice-monthly expeditions here. They were hard to miss, with Peter and Ned chattering loud enough to drown out a siren and the girl rolling her eyes in their wake. Happy hadn't missed the goofy smiles the kid sent her way, either. He smirked. "So, you got stuck because your girlfriend distracted you, then. Good job, kid."

Peter glowered at him with all the heat of an offended golden retriever and went back to jiggling his leg free of the rapidly dissolving webs. It had fizzled out remarkably fast once the solvent was poured on, shrinking and withering into puddles of fluid that soon dried up and vanished without a trace. Both Peter and Happy breathed a sigh of relief when the last droplet evaporated; a sticky, web-covered floor wouldn't have been fun to explain to a man who took his lab as seriously as Tony Stark did. Peter seemed to realize this at the same moment Happy was thinking it because he turned to him with a cringe.

"Hey, uh...don't tell Mr. Stark about this. Please?"

Happy snorted. He stabbed a finger up at the ceiling and its web of overhead beams and tool arms and—nearly hidden beneath all the wires and steel—cameras. "He's gonna see it himself. You know he records everything down here, right?"

Peter's eyes went wide as he craned his head slowly up to stare at the lenses trained on him. His face washed crimson.

"Oh, crap...he's gonna be on this for weeks, isn't he?"

"Try months." Happy didn't bother hiding his grin as he sauntered towards the stairs, Peter trailing resignedly in his wake. Teenage antics were rarely more amusing than they were annoying, but tonight was a welcome exception. Tony wouldn't be the only one snickering over that footage for a good long while.

"_Crap_."


	4. Slow It Down

_AN: I rewrote this four times. I'm still not sure if I like it, but I wanted it out of my system, so here we are! Thank you all for reading!_

Wednesdays sucked for Peter, and there was no way around it.

Granted, school was a bit of a chore nearly all the time now, when the world outside of Midtown's grounds was bursting with so many things that were infinitely more interesting than AP History or Spanish II, but Wednesdays were the _worst_.

With Ned ensconced in a classroom at the other end of the building with the Programmer's Club for most of the afternoon, Peter was left to slog through the Flash Thompson gauntlet alone on his way out the door to freedom: a process that was always ten times harder without Ned around for moral support. The day's only saving grace was the fact that Happy was waiting for him in the pick-up line, ready to spirit him off to Tony's lab.

As usual, Peter's spider-sense flared to life as soon as he stepped out of the building. In the same instant, his sharp ears caught the familiar ring of Flash's snicker from somewhere in the distance. An engine revved, and Peter steeled himself as he took the first cautious step onto the asphalt. Roaring by in his latest "borrowed-from-my-dad" car was one of Flash's favorite games, especially when he could cut it close enough to make Peter skitter out of the way with only inches to spare. Peter sighed, fighting the urge to just leap across the remaining distance and bypass the street and all its annoyances altogether. Still, he had to do this…he squared his shoulders and jogged into the road.

As expected, Flash turned out of the parking lot and into the main drive in a cacophony of squealing tires and obnoxious horn blasts, but before he could pass, a sharp voice cut through the noise of student chatter and idling cars.

"Hey! You!" Peter's head snapped up just in time to see Happy's car pulling up alongside him in the line, with Happy himself yelling out a window that hadn't even finished rolling down. "Who taught you to drive, huh?! You think hit and runs are funny?!"

Flash went wide-eyed, slowing rather than accelerating as he usually did when he neared Peter's spot at the head of the crosswalk. "Who—?"

"I got your license plates, buddy! Slow it down!" Happy's bluster carried on as Flash seemed to pale at the idea of an adult taking any interest in his driving habits before gunning the engine again and speeding out of sight. Peter gawked, his jog slowing to a puzzled walk as he tried to sort out what had just happened.

Weirdness tended to follow Peter like a lost puppy, but this was…a whole new level of strange. Since when did Happy, the man who'd hung up on him more times than he could count and who spent more time grumbling at him than smiling, get this involved in anything that Tony didn't directly order him to? Sure, he'd warmed up a little over the past few months with the boxing lessons and the occasional question about how his night had gone and everything, but…still. There was a clear line running down the center of Peter's life, separating his civilian stuff from his superhero stuff. The line was blurred in places, with Ned's surprise introduction to Spider-Man and the piping hot mess that was the Homecoming Incident, but Happy had always stayed squarely on the superhero side of things. He was reliable that way, always staying in his lane and steering clear of any unnecessary intrusions. At least until now.

"Happy, what're you _doing,_ man?! I can handle that kinda stuff myself—" Peter finally shook off the shock enough to speak by the time he reached Happy's window.

"Sure you can, but you _don't_, so somebody's gotta do it for you. Get in the car."

"What? You don't have to do anything for—"

"Parker, get. In. The car."

Peter snapped his jaw shut with a harsh sigh and rounded the car to slide into the backseat. He wasn't letting it go that easy, but there was no sense in arguing the point in the middle of the street. It wouldn't be an easy fight—Happy never was, whether they were debating the proper length of patrol reports or bickering about the acceptable number of emojis per text—but it would be even more difficult if Tony had been the one to put Happy up to it. And Peter strongly suspected he had. It wasn't as if he made a habit of talking about school drama in the precious couple of hours he had with Tony each month, but things slipped out occasionally, and Tony was nothing if not observant. Peter wouldn't put it past him to give Happy the go-ahead for a little intimidation. Nor could he think of any reason why Happy would do it if Tony _hadn't._

He could feel his classmates' eyes on him as he let himself be ordered into the Audi's backseat. Peter groaned and slid down in his seat until his face dipped beneath the level of the car's window. He did his best to _avoid_ attracting attention. Being the kid whose ride had elected himself traffic cop—even if they could technically use one, at least when it came to Flash—wouldn't exactly help with that.

"Put your seatbelt on." Happy shot him a look in the rearview mirror and frowned at the way Peter was trying to melt into the floorboard.

"What was _that_?" Peter waited until they pulled away to gradually slump into his proper seat and fasten the requested seatbelt. He folded his arms over his chest and glowered, but it only drew a snort from the front seat.

"What was what?"

"That! You going all…all _weird_ on Flash!"  
"That the name of the kid who nearly ran you down with his convertible last time, too?"

Peter paused. He dimly remembered crossing the street to Happy's spot in line a few weeks prior, only to have to dodge Flash's front bumper as he blew by. But that was normal. Happened a million times a semester. Happy might've looked a bit more thunderous than usual when he reached the safety of the Audi, but Peter hadn't thought much of it at the time. That was just Happy's face; he'd gotten used to it.

"Yeah…he does that, but it's not like he's ever actually hit me with it—"

"That's real reassuring," Happy's tone drifted from sarcasm into something sharper and more concerned. "He do that a lot? You oughta report that."

"—and I can totally handle it. Besides, you don't need to get involved in school stuff. That's not your job, Happy."

"I haven't seen your name on any paychecks recently, so I don't think that's your call, kid." Happy's tone softened a notch. "My job's whatever Tony says, and Tony says to look after you. Especially when you won't look after yourself."

"I _do_ look after myself—" Peter sputtered, a familiar sense of frustration rising in his chest. Once, just once, it would be nice to be taken at his word, rather than fussed at as if he actually was the helpless child everyone seemed to think he was.

"Oh, yeah? What was that, then? Letting yourself get run over doesn't seem like looking after much of anything. You gotta work on your self-preservation skills." Happy raised a finger to point at Peter in the rearview. "Listen, you just be glad I was the one who saw that instead of Tony. He would've made a _real_ scene."

Peter snorted and had opened his mouth to comment on how much of scene it was already when it hit him. Tony didn't know. And if Tony didn't know, he couldn't very well have told Happy to intervene, which meant…

"You…didn't have to do that?"

"Hey, we just covered this. It's my job." Happy's voice went a bit stiff. He hadn't missed the inference, even if the true meaning of the question was easily dodged. Peter blinked and shifted his slouch to a more comfortable position. So much for keeping a hard line between superhero and civilian; the line had just been blurred again. He found himself fighting a faint smile. For once, he didn't mind a little blurring. Even if he didn't actually _need_ Happy to fight his battles for him…it wasn't a bad feeling to have a little back-up.

"Didn't know this stuff fell under the Forehead of Security jurisdiction."

"_Hey_." Happy glared at him in the mirror. "You keep making comments like that, and you're gonna need those self-preservation skills sooner rather than later."

Peter snickered. With strength like his, threats like that could hardly be considered scary, and the older man knew it. It never seemed to dull his enthusiasm for growling, though. Tony claimed it was how he showed his affection (usually whilst being glowered or hollered at himself), and maybe it was. Peter had never been quite sure. How could he be, when the man was being paid to look after him? To _care_ about him. That—particularly in light of the early days of "don't call me, I'll call you"—had always made him wonder.

At least until now.


	5. Catch Some Zs

"Tony says another ten minutes."

They'd been stuck there on a bench outside some godforsaken conference room at a tech expo whose name Happy had already forgotten for just over an hour. Tony was trapped in yet another pointless meeting with people who were too important to ignore entirely, but not important enough to carve out time for private appointments when he wasn't running the convention circuit. Happy hooked a finger underneath his tie to loosen it, then folded his arms comfortably across his chest. They could be there a while.

"He said that ten minutes ago." Peter, who was along as an actual intern for once, had been wearing down long before they settled onto the bench to wait. After a full day of trekking around the crowded conference and its many exhibits and lectures and networking venues coupled with lack of sleep from flying in during the wee hours of the morning, even Peter's impressive enthusiasm was flagging. He was a good sport—as always, to Happy's continual shock—but now, with the evening winding down, he was beginning to look as haggard as Happy felt.

"Yeah, that's how this kinda thing usually goes."

"Well, that's—" Peter broke off with a yawn. "—dumb. Who makes business decisions when they're this sleep-deprived?"

Happy gave a wry shrug. "That's geniuses for you. All brains, no common sense."

Peter snickered next to him before lapsing into quiet again. The conference center was settling around them, lights dimming and the piped-in background music fading away into a silence as sleepy as Peter's. Happy glanced over to check on him and found him leaning his head against the wall behind them with his eyelids at half-mast and his clumsily-knotted tie loose at his neck. He had the sneaking suspicion that the boy was treading dangerously close to the bedtime he had claimed not to have when Happy had first caught him smothering yawns a few hours earlier and taken that golden opportunity for teasing.

"Want me to run you over to the hotel?" Happy asked softly. It wasn't far. There was never a shortage of five-stars near these sort of conferences, so they were bunking only a few miles up the road. There was the possibility that Tony would finish up in the interim, but Happy wasn't too bothered. The original plan had been to wait out the meeting and all drive back in one fell swoop, but if Tony was going to take forever and a day hashing out the details of tech collaborations, Happy didn't mind making him wait a little just out of spite. Besides, the kid's aunt had entrusted them with the responsibility of keeping Peter alive and in good health for three days, and letting him doze on hallway benches—which he certainly would be, if this carried on much longer—likely wasn't what she had in mind.

"Nah, it's good. You'd have to make two trips. That'd be dumb." Peter pulled his feet up onto the bench and rested his arms over his knees in a way that didn't look remotely comfortable to Happy. Then again, he had no bug DNA floating around his system, so what did he know?

"That your word for the day? Dumb? Not a great word for a braniac convention."

Peter snickered again, drifting nearly into giggles. Happy rolled his eyes, but with little heat behind them. It was easy to forget how young the boy next to him was when they were talking weapons and web-shooters and crime, but much easier to remember when he was chortling out of pure exhaustion.

Happy slid his phone from his pocket again and pecked out a message. Peter didn't comment on his texting speed this time, which was in itself warning sign. The kid had caught a glimpse of his one-finger-and-a-squint typing style on the plane and been groaning about it with all the incredulity of an insulted tech prodigy ever since (much to Tony's amusement). They were _both_ punks.

**11:42pm: Kid's about to drop. Hurry up.**

_**11:44pm: Hold your horses. Five minutes.**_Tony's message pinged back fast enough that Happy knew Tony had likely been keeping an eye on his phone—and the time—anyway. Happy chuckled. That wasn't a courtesy he usually extended when it was just the two of them slogging through this kind of thing. Having Peter around certainly had its advantages.

"Looks like another five minutes," Happy said, shifting to find a position that didn't make his legs cramp. He was getting too old for crappy furniture. At least he assumed that was the problem since it didn't seem to be bothering Peter. The kid hadn't so much as twitched since his last bit of fidgeting. "Think you can make it 'til then?"

When no answer came, Happy frowned. "Kid?"

He got a whistling little snore in reply. Peter was slumped a few inches further down the wall with his chin on his chest and his mouth ajar. Happy tamped down a smile. Apparently, not even spider-strength was enough to keep a kid awake through an event like this. He'd be sure to rub that in the next time Tony ribbed _him_ about being less than enthralled by all the tech talk he was so often obligated to sit through.

**11:46pm: Kid's out and if you aren't in the next ten minutes, we're leaving without you.**

A soft weight sank against Happy's shoulder, startling him away from the "send" button. He snapped his head around to find that Peter had listed sideways to fall against the nearest solid object: Happy himself. He sighed. He had long ago resigned himself to a job that would never be the same two days in a row. One day it was running interference with pushy journalists and the next it was crashing onto a race course without a race _car_ to rescue his superhero boss; it was an endless parade of fresh experiences (and fresh headaches). Eventually, it all blurred together until nothing much surprised him.

Having a kid fall sleep on his shoulder, however, was a new sensation. Realizing that he didn't mind too much was an even newer one.

After a couple decades of waiting outside conference rooms by himself, having a little company wasn't a bad thing. Granted, he wasn't _always_ alone. As much as Tony pretended to be a loner, there were always a few people that stayed in his orbit no matter what. And if they were in Tony's orbit, they were also in Happy's. When Pepper was a harried assistant trying to keep all the moving parts of Tony's bizarre lifestyle in check, she'd done a lot of waiting right beside Happy. So had Rhodey, back before he was as in-demand as Tony was, when he had the time to sneak in quick weekend meet-ups with his best friend when Tony's conference schedule overlapped his own leave periods.

The family, such as it was, was a somewhat fluid arrangement as far as who was present for what these days, but it had always been a tight, rarely changing circle. Happy liked it that way. Change was almost never good, and fewer people meant fewer complications. It had been nice during the times his vigils were shared to not have to worry about sharing them with strangers. And, he supposed as the kid snored into the fabric of his good suit, he still wasn't. The circle had just widened enough for one more.

The doors down the hall finally whooshed open and a tide of expensive suits streamed out. Tony peeled away from the group quickly, sauntering their way just a little too fast for his casual ambivalence to be believed. He stopped a few yards away and cocked his head at the tableau on the bench before a wide smirk unfurled.

"Now, isn't this sweet...Look at you two, getting along and bonding and whatnot. You're gonna make me jealous. Really, you are."

Happy leveled him with an unimpressed stare. "This is your fault, you know. Are you done? Can we go?"

"No. I need a photo." The smirk went a tinge wicked. "For May, of course. Sort of a trip update kind of thing…she'll love it."

"_No._" He didn't mind letting the kid catch a little sleep on his shoulder if that's what he needed, but he refused to let any one else see the evidence. "Would you please get over here and wake him up? My shoulder's falling asleep."

"Shhh," Tony waved off his sputtering with a dismissive hand. "Stop talking, you're gonna ruin the focus."

"Tony, no, I don't want—"

"Cheese in three, two, and…"

Happy grudgingly let his glower relax to a pursed-lip half-smile as Tony's hand came up to tap the shutter button on the side of his glasses. There was no sense in worrying May with too stern of an expression if Tony went through with sending the photo; she was too nice a lady for that, not to mention the way Peter would fuss about it. He let out an exasperated sigh, but he made no move to throw himself out of frame, as he might have a few months earlier. That, after all, would send the kid tumbling. And that was no way to wake up. Especially not for what might be the only good change to their little circle in a very long time.

Happy still wasn't a fan of change in general…but this one was growing on him.


	6. Always Answer

_**AN: Firstly, thank you to all the kind reviewers! I've so appreciated your sweet words! And to Mary, in particular, here's a bit of the Hurt!Peter you asked for. The scenario you mentioned in your second review is actually a bit similar to an idea I've been toying with for a second fic, so keep your eyes peeled! Thank you so much for reading! **_

_**Secondly, when I started writing these, I didn't go into it with a particular chronological order in mind, so this one is technically the earliest of the bunch so far. Think...a month or so after the events of Homecoming.**_

Happy never thought he would be quite this familiar with the streets and alleys of Queens. Particularly the late night streets and alleys of Queens…He scowled as his GPS squawked, prompting him to turn down a narrow gap between apartments that barely cleared the Audi's mirrors. An assortment of garbage cans and dumpsters from the surrounding complexes loomed up in the narrow beams of his headlights, but there wasn't a web or a mask to be seen. Happy growled and stabbed at the screen built into the dash. The flashing red tracker dot still claimed Peter was there somewhere, hidden among the junk, but Happy saw nothing but bins and trash bags and the occasional rat skittering along the shadows.

He hadn't gotten the voicemail until half an hour ago, nearly forty-five minutes after Peter had left it, but the wobbly, frightened quality to the kid's voice had insured that Happy broke a few dozen traffic codes to get here quickly. Tony was usually the kid's first choice for an S.O.S. these days, but with the man himself hosting another in the season's long line of charity galas, it was no mystery why Peter had chosen him instead. If Peter knew for sure that Tony was busy—and he would, given the media attention these red carpet events garnered—Peter wouldn't even consider bothering him. Happy jammed the Audi's headlights up to the high-beam setting with more force than necessary; that kid was too polite for his own good, sometimes.

The call played over and over in the back of Happy's head as he inched the car forward and scoured the darkness. The last time he'd ignored Peter—even if that had been intentional rather than accidental, like tonight—the night had ended with half of Coney Island going up in flames. As much as he hoped that this wasn't about to become a bad case of déjà vu, he couldn't help the growing sense of panic in his chest. The more he thought of the message, the more that panic swelled.

_"Uh...hey, Happy. It's Peter. So, I know tonight's kind of a busy night for you guys, but...uh...if you can, I could use some help. Maybe just like a ride or something. Call me back? Maybe?"_

'Maybe.'

As if he fully expected to be left alone in whichever of these grimy alleys he'd landed in. As much as he hated to admit it, Happy couldn't say he was surprised.

He'd noticed the difference after the plane crash. At Tony's insistence, Peter still called to make his "patrol reports" most nights. He still pestered Happy with ridiculous questions and dumb jokes from the backseat every time he ferried him back and forth to Tony's lab, and thanked him politely whenever he dropped him off...but he never _asked_ for help. Not anymore. Happy would be lying if he said that didn't rankle him a little, even if the blame did rest entirely on his shoulders. It wasn't as if he needed more responsibilities on his plate, but he didn't like the idea of the kid taking on the world alone. Or believing that he had to. Sure, it had taken him some time to realize it, but Peter was a _good_ kid, even if he did talk too much and care too much and—

Happy froze as a lump amid the garbage bags twitched. It was too big to be a rat. Too long to be a stray animal. That left one very specific, very concerning possibility. His pulse hitched a beat as his mind leapt to some of the uglier conclusions as to why Peter was sprawled out in a pile of garbage, and he found himself swearing already as he threw the car in park and took off for the dumpster as fast as his legs would carry him.

"Kid!" The Audi's high-beams cast odd shadows over the dumpster's interior, but the flash of red and blue laid out against the sea of black plastic was unmistakable. Happy gripped the edge of the bin and gulped. No obvious blood or limbs bent at weird angles. That was good. But the kid wasn't moving anymore, aside from the shallow rise and fall of his chest. That was...less good. Happy seized him by the shoulder and jostled it carefully, almost hesitantly. "Peter!"

"What—ugh..."The mask's lenses flared wide as Peter came awake with a startled flail and a groan. One hand clamped onto Happy's wrist like a vice, then quickly loosened as the boy gradually slid back into awareness. "Happy...hi."

"Hi, yourself," Happy said, his tone coming out clipped in his agitation. "What'd you do? Why're you lying around in the trash?"

"Got beat up. Kinda sucked..." The slow, near-slur of Peter's voice was suspiciously reminiscent of a concussion, if Happy remembered his boxing days correctly. "I kept tryin' to get up, but it just...didn't work. Like my head says sure, but my legs say no, you know?"

"Uh-huh," Happy murmured absently as he brushed the collected grime off the kid's suit, skimming a hand over his limbs to check for fractures that weren't immediately visible. He shot a surreptitious glance around the alley for any witnesses—finding a spot in New York without surveillance or traffic cams was rare—then reached over to tug off the mask. Peter screwed his eyes shut against the sudden influx of unfiltered light and let out a groan. Happy didn't blame him. A thin line of blood trickled from a clearly broken nose to an equally bloody lip while the tell-tale redness beneath both eyes warned of shiners to come in the morning.

"Did you have to do that? I mean, those scent filters were really making this dumpster a lot easier to take..."

"Open your eyes, I gotta see 'em for a minute."

Peter reluctantly complied, prying open first one eye, then the other. Happy caught his chin to tip his face towards the light. Both pupils were blown wide and unfocused: a concussion, pure and simple. Still, Happy would get him down to the compound where someone with more training than he had could look the kid over just in case.

"Okay, looks like it's safe to move you…think you're ready to try getting up again?"

Peter frowned, but set his jaw and reached up to take the hand Happy offered anyway. They both heaved, but Peter's grip went slack before he even came close to clearing the lip of the dumpster. He cringed apologetically, gasping out a pathetic "sorry" as he crumpled backwards again. Happy's brow furrowed with concern. Perhaps there was more than a concussion at play—broken ribs, bruised organs, hairline fractures—he'd seen it all with Tony, and he wouldn't be one bit surprised if the kid was following in his footsteps. Heaven help them all. The only consolation lay in the fact that none of the suit's sensors seemed to have gone off. If there had been internal bleeding or anything else that serious, an alert surely would've come through by now.

"Let's try that again." Happy reached for Peter again, this time sliding an arm under the knees and shoulders and scooping him up like a much younger child. He felt the kid stiffen, though whether in pain or surprise he couldn't tell, but he grabbed for Happy's shoulders to steady himself all the same. "You good?"

"Yeah…s'all good. Thanks."

"Don't mention it." Happy staggered a little under the extra weight as he headed for the car. It had been a good few years since his job had included bodily carrying anyone anywhere; he was out of practice. Hopefully, this wouldn't become a frequent enough occurrence for him to get back into it. "And by that, I do actually mean to not, under any circumstances, mention this to Tony. He'll whine about not getting full chauffeur service anymore."

There was a huff of breath that might've been laughter against Happy's shoulder. "Secret's safe with me."

"Good." Happy gritted his teeth as he fiddled with the door to the backseat whilst juggling a wobbly teenager. It finally gave enough to let him nudge it open with a knee and carefully deposit Peter sideways on the seat.

"Now," he panted, as he helped the kid lie back. "You want to tell me what happened?"

Peter grumbled something unintelligible about a robbery as Happy snapped a seatbelt over his waist and hoped that would keep him from rolling around too much if he fell asleep during the drive. The story trickled out in garbled bits and pieces, beginning with a scream from Peter's second-favorite bodega and ending with the bitter description of what sounded like petty thieves armed with the remnants of the Vulture's tech. Most of it had been confiscated, but outliers sold long before Peter brought down the gang still cropped up from time to time. And whenever it did, it packed a punch. Happy grimaced as Peter stumbled through the part of the report in which he was beaten to a pulp by a goon with glowing blue gauntlets, his voice sounding hazier by the minute.

"—so then I called you." Peter paused with wide eyes, as if realizing for the first time what had happened. "And you…came?"

"Why'd you call if you didn't think I'd show?" Happy regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. He already knew it was an answer he wouldn't like.

Peter shrugged, then winced with the pain the movement must have triggered. "There wasn't anyone else tonight. I would've bugged Ned or Mr. Stark or Aunt May, but they all had other stuff and...well...had to be you. But it won't happen again! Promise. I'm gonna be careful, and I'll keep it—"

"If you need me, call me." Happy cut him off firmly, punctuated it with a stern look over his shoulder as he dropped into the driver's seat. Peter blinked at him, looking impossibly ridiculous and impossibly young with his mask-tousled hair and superhero-suit combination.

"But—"

"_Call_ me. If you need help, I'll answer, got it?"

"But before—" Happy wilted a little at the stab of guilt that came with the cautious uncertainty in Peter's voice. He had no defense. Nothing he could say to make up for leaving the boy in the back to fight battles he wasn't ready for all by himself. Nothing, but the promise to do better.

"Before was before, and it's not gonna happen again." Happy tried not to snap, but habit was a hard thing to break, even when he was trying. Peter cracked a faint smile and tipped his head away to hide it. At least he didn't seem to mind the gruff veneer. Happy would take that to mean he understood. "I'm gonna answer."

Happy wasn't entirely sure if the promise was more for Peter or for himself. Either way, he had mistakes to fix. Trust to rebuild. All he had to do was keep the kid alive long enough to do it. He heaved a sigh and settled back into his seat with an air of determined resignation. As if he didn't have enough people to protect already. Still, he'd managed to keep one injury-prone superhero in one piece (mostly) so far…how hard could it be to look after one more?


	7. Grab a Snack

Somewhere along the line, it had come to Happy's attention that Peter Parker was a human garbage disposal. The kid never forgot his gummy worm wrappers in the Audi or left behind _too_ many crumbs from the seemingly endless supply of granola bars that sprang from his backpack (he was ahead of Tony on the neatness front, at least), but he never seemed to stop eating, either. Happy himself distantly remembered inhaling just about everything he could get his hands on when he was struggling through his own teenage growth spurts, but this seemed…excessive. Even for a teenage vigilante.

He did try not to let it bother him. And, for the most part, the crinkle of the candy wrappers and the constant crunching and chewing didn't—they were a break from the chatter about Ned's latest hacking venture or the drama of the last Decathalon meet, after all.

What _did_ bother him was listening to the kid's stomach growl like a rampaging bear whenever there didn't happen to be anything edible within reach on the drive up to the compound. And while Peter apparently wasn't getting fed enough, Happy was getting thoroughly fed _up. _Didn't the kid eat at school? Or at home, for that matter? He knew May Parker wasn't exactly well-off, but he'd never seen anything to suggest that putting food on the table was a problem…And yet, here Peter was, sounding as if he hadn't eaten in a month. Happy shot him a cursory glance in the rearview mirror, taking in the oversized sweater and gangly limbs. He always looked scrawny to Happy, but he'd always chalked that slightness up to the fact that he was…well…a _kid._ Now, he wondered.

As if sensing the scrutiny, Peter looked up from the textbook propped on his knees. "What?"

"You okay?" Happy gave him the best piercing stare he could manage while simultaneously trying to drive. It was usually pretty effective at getting answers out of stammering interns or difficult contractors, but it was hit or miss with Peter these days. His intimidation factor seemed to be decreasing sharply in direct correlation to the ever increasing amount of time he spent with the kid. It wasn't _entirely_ a bad thing, Happy supposed, but corralling teenagers was so much more difficult when they no longer thought you were scary. Especially since containing that one in particular hadn't been an easy task to begin with.

Peter's brow furrowed. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Maybe because your stomach's growling like crazy even though I just heard you put away at least a couple of those energy bar things—"

"It was _one_, not a couple!"

"—and a full bottle of water. You not eating at school? Somebody taking your lunch money?"

Peter gave him the most withering look he'd ever seen on that face, which was roughly as disapproving as a wet cat and completely unwarranted since Happy knew for a fact that he allowed himself to get pushed around far more than a kid who could match blows with Captain America should.

"_No. _That's…Just no. That's not even how that works anymore, Happy, it's all account numbers and monthly prepayments."

"Yeah? And you got money in your account?"

"Yes! Why wouldn't I?"

"I don't know, but you're acting like you're starving. Tony won't like it." And Tony would most definitely notice. If Peter arrived with stomach pangs that sounded like they were about to eat him from the inside out, Happy wouldn't be the only one fretting. Not that he _was_ fretting.

"No, no, no—" The idea of worrying Tony, at least, got a sputter and a frantic headshake from Peter. "I'm good, Happy, really—it's nothing. It's just that my metabolism is kinda…weird…now."

Happy squinted at him in the rearview mirror. So it was less of a teenage boy thing and more of a superhero thing. That figured. At least he wouldn't have to go hunt down any lunchroom bullies or funnel extra food funds Peter's way, as he'd suspected he might, but this didn't exactly make the problem easier to solve. As a rule, he wasn't a fan of all this masks and magic stuff. As he'd once told Tony, the world was weird now, and he didn't like it. Even if it did make up most of Tony's new life. He tended to forget that Peter, who sat in his backseat and wrote essays or chattered about NASA's Instagram, was even more heavily rooted in it than Tony. Tony could take off the suits when the fight was over, but Peter…Peter was different from the inside out.

"Like, because I can do all this extra stuff, my body needs extra energy and because it needs extra energy, I just…get hungry a lot," Peter said, as though the "extra stuff" was as mundane as soccer or Pilates rather than catching crashing cars with his bare hands. "I've usually got more bars or something, but I was running late this morning, so I didn't have time to grab 'em."

"I'm good, though!" Peter went on, his smile taking on the nervous edge it often did when his powers came up. "I had a big lunch, and you know Mr. Stark always orders something in later, so it'll be fine."

Happy kept frowning. "Later" could mean hours from now, given the way those two got sucked into their projects. If the kid was hungry now, working for who knew how long on an empty stomach would be utter misery…Happy couldn't have that. On impulse, he steered out of the traffic towards the first solution he saw. Sure, the part of his job that dealt in fixing superhuman problems might always make him feel a little out of his depth, but no one could say he didn't give it his best shot.

"Hey, why're we pulling over?" Peter was already shifting uneasily in the backseat before Happy had even maneuvered them into the sliver of available space at the curb.

"Relax—" The kid seemed jumpier these days. Had been ever since the Coney Island incident. Something about a kid—a _child,_ who still wore punny t-shirts and carried his homework next to his super-suit—even possessing the kind of memories that made a person that particular brand of wary about life's surprises didn't sit well with Happy, but there was little he could do about that now. That was part of the mask and magic deal. "—it's just a pitstop."

"A pitstop," Peter scanned the street with puzzled eyes before landing on the dingy little hotdog stand on the corner. His eyes lit, but his brow furrowed. It wasn't as if they made a lot of stops on their regular jaunts out to the compound. Happy did his best to keep those trips short and sweet, with as little chitchat or wasted time as he could manage. There were occasional detours for errands requested specifically by Tony or for the occasional refueling stop, but this was new. "Why—"

"Look, I don't have to have super-hearing to hear that stomach of yours growling, and I don't want to _keep_ hearing it all the way upstate," Happy groused, doing his best to keep his tone gruff and commanding where it belonged rather than dipping into the fussy sort of concern that prompted him to pull over in the first place. That came with his job, too, but he had an image to uphold. "Go get yourself a hotdog—_two _hotdogs, even, just get enough to keep things quiet."

"Oh. Um…okay, I'll just be a sec, then—" Peter had gone wide-eyed and a little red around the ears at the mention of his very audible stomach, so it wasn't surprising when he bolted for the door faster than strictly necessary. Grown-up as he pretended to be, he still embarrassed hilariously easy for a kid who swung around the city in a unitard.

"Wait! Use this." Happy handed back one of the several company credit cards that lived in his wallet. It was the "Peter Card," opened the day before they left for Berlin all those months ago and meant for all the little expenses that came with looking after an intern/teenage superhero. Hotel rooms (just the once) and backpacks (two, so far) and aspirin (for Happy's newly-minted headaches) and now this. "You're on intern time, so you're on intern money."

Peter took it almost gingerly. While Peter didn't exactly have to be _coaxed_ to spend someone else's money, he never seemed entirely comfortable with it, either. "Um…thanks?"

"Don't thank me, thank Tony."

"I'll do that!" The reply was almost lost as Peter sprang out onto the sidewalk and jogged off to the stand. Happy let out an amused huff. If the kid ever did it, Tony wouldn't have the faintest idea what he was being thanked for—he rarely tracked his own expense accounts, let alone any of those he opened for those in either his employ or his protection—but Happy wasn't about to quash the kid's enthusiasm. Tony could use a few more smiles like the one Happy had just seen in his life. And Peter could stand to keep all the enthusiasm he still had.

Peter returned two minutes later, balancing at least three hotdogs in the crook of his arm as he slid into the backseat. Happy didn't doubt that he could inhale all of them by the time they reached their destination; he'd seen the boy down an entire pizza in ten minutes flat during one of last month's lab excursions. He gave a satisfied nod as Peter yanked the door shut behind him and shifted the car out of park to get back underway. They hadn't lost too much time. If they hurried, they might even make it before Tony noticed their absence and started fussi—

Happy blinked as a hot foil package was shoved over his shoulder. "Hey, what's—"

"It's a long drive upstate," Peter said around a mouthful of his own hot dog. Happy nearly did a double take in the rearview mirror as he realized the kid was already a bite away from being done with the first of the two dogs still in his hands. "Figured if I got hungry, you probably did, too. Maybe not weird-metabolism hungry, but…still. Plus, it felt really rude to eat in front of you—well, technically behind you, I guess—without getting you anything, you know?"

Happy snorted, peeling back the foil with one hand and guiding the car back out into the sea of honking cabs and speeding New Yorkers with the other. Considerate kid. But that was hardly new information. It was another trait that made him a much more…tolerable…addition to Tony's life than the rest of it. The rest of the Super Friends would always make him uneasy, but—superhuman or not—Peter was still just a kid you could share a hot dog with.

"Thanks, kid."

Peter grinned, mischief and mustard staining his smile as he fished in his pocket before leaning forward again to dump the credit card in Happy's cupholder.

"Don't thank me—thank Tony."


	8. Keep Talking

As much as Happy grumbled about pointless chatter, he was finding the silence much harder to stomach. Now that he was faced with it, he liked a quiet Peter Parker much less than he liked a noisy one.

The kid reclined on a gurney, one side swathed in bandages from ribs to shoulder, the opposite hand taped up to accommodate the large-bore IV needle that had pumped in the drugs needed to keep him out during surgery, and his mouth clamped firmly shut. For the most part, it had stayed that way ever since he'd struggled back to full consciousness after Tony's private medical staff had dug the bullet from his shoulder. Happy perched on a creaky plastic chair at his side and frowned. He'd gotten a groggy "hey, Happy," when he arrived to take Tony's place at the boy's bedside and Tony had gotten a soft "okay" when he gently ruffled the kid's hair and said he was off to confer with the medical team, but that was all. It wasn't right. Happy finally cleared his throat.

"You need anything?"

Peter shook his head. He looked smaller than usual hunched against the pillows of a hospital bed. Seemed even younger with the bleary eyes and cheeks pale with blood loss. Another ten minutes dragged by before he spoke.

"Was the kid okay?" His voice seemed smaller, too, as if there was some sort of odd correlation between the volume of words he let out and his stature.

"Yeah. Yeah, Tony said he was good when he left." A little shaken, if Tony's description of the father and son Peter had swooped in to rescue was accurate, but safe and sound and very, very worried about the fate of their savior. Spider-Man had launched himself into the middle of the mugging just in time to take the bullet meant for the father and web the would-be thief to the pavement before promptly crumpling to the ground in a bleeding heap. "Said he was real worried about letting anybody get near you while you were down, though. Pretty sure you've got a new number one fan."

That was a lie. Tony would always hold down that spot, whether he openly admitted it or not. The little boy from that street corner had a shot at the top five, though, per Tony's harried description of how he very nearly had to pry him away from his post of helping his father—an EMT by day, apparently—hold steady pressure on the hole in Peter's chest. Happy bit back a soft smile. Trust Peter to make friends wherever he went, even whilst actively bleeding out on a sidewalk.

A faint smile ghosted across Peter's face, too, and some of the tension ebbed from his shoulders before the smile gave way to that haunted sort of stare he'd been wearing since he woke up.

"And his dad? Was he okay, too?" He'd already asked that particular question twice, both times before he was truly awake enough to retain Tony's reassurances that nobody but Peter had gotten themselves hurt. Happy nodded dutifully again.

"He's fine, too. Not a scratch on him." Maybe the lingering effects of the near-heart attack that usually came with having Iron Man blast down from the sky at full screaming-repulsors speed, but no scratches. "You did good."

Peter let out a noncommittal hum and turned away to glance out the window that bordered their corner of the medbay. It wasn't a bad view of the compound from there, even in the dingy gray light of the pre-dawn hours, but Happy had the sinking feeling that the sleek angles of glass and concrete weren't what Peter was seeing.

Happy knew very little of the details of what had happened to Peter's family. Peter talked constantly, about many subjects, but never about that. He had seen the scant summaries from Tony's original background checks, the casual descriptions of plane crashes and muggings gone wrong that made his stomach twist every time he thought of them in connection with the goofy kid he knew, but it never occurred to him that Peter came so close to reliving some of those memories during his nightly vigils. Not until tonight, anyway, when he and Tony had spent a gut-wrenching ten minutes listening to Peter cry out for the uncle he'd lost as he came out from under the anesthesia. Somehow, that worried him more than the bullet wound did. Weird bug DNA would make sure _that_ didn't even scar. But the fact that the kid was now staring blankly out a window, keeping his silence and worrying the hem of the sheet over his legs with bloodstained fingernails...That kind of wound took a lot longer to scab over.

Happy shot a glance at the door through which Tony had vanished to go harass the staff about treatment plans and the like and _willed_ the man to reappear. Like so much of his job these days, coaxing a traumatized teenager out of a fugue state left him feeling as out of place and underqualified as a bull behind a china counter. Tony always knew what to say, especially with the kid; they could talk circuits and relays and servos for hours without ever coming up for air. And even when they didn't say anything—when the heavy subject of portals in the sky or rubble on their backs meant they _couldn't_ say anything—that never seemed to hinder their conversation. Some things could be said without words, sure, but Happy…Happy was struggling to say anything at all.

"You hungry?" That was an easy conversational target, at least. The kid was always hungry. Ask him what he wanted, and he was off on a five-minute ramble about the merits of pretzels over hot dogs.

"M'good." Peter swiped a hand across his eyes to clear the sleep grit, flashing a thin, pasted-on smile as an afterthought. "Thanks, though."

Happy pursed his lips. Of course it couldn't be that easy. Still, he had to do something to keep the kid from wallowing. He couldn't broach the topic that really needed to be aired out—that was a Tony thing, if ever he saw one—but perhaps there were other options…

"Well, if you aren't hungry, you want to try getting some of your fluids down?" A plastic mug of electrolyte-heavy, cherry-flavored stuff had been left behind by the compound's doctor on call. Peter's healing factor did well on its own, but it needed every boost it could get after a hit like the one it had taken tonight. Peter, however, hadn't touched the mug since he'd woken up. He shrugged.

"C'mon." Happy picked up the mug and pushed it gently into Peter's hands. He took it hastily back when the drink sloshed perilously close to spilling over onto the kid's shaky fingers. Peter's hands kept trembling until he snatched them back and balled them up under the covers. Happy paused, his stomach twisting again at the way the kid wilted, but didn't comment. He held the mug out again, lifting it close enough to let Peter reach the straw with no hands required. "Drink up. You're behind schedule on staying hydrated."

Peter took a cautious sip and wrinkled his nose. Happy raised a brow at him.

"What?"

"Cherry sucks."

"So do bullet wounds," Happy retorted gruffly. "So that's just what you get for getting yourself shot."

Peter gave him a reproachful look and let out an affronted huff around the straw pinched between his teeth. Happy made a mental note to look into stocking a wider variety of flavors, though. For unrelated reasons, of course. For the moment, he just took those three words as progress.

They lapsed into silence again, then, broken only by the muted beeps and whirs of the monitors and machines that surrounded them and the occasional slurp from Peter's straw. Happy switched hands when his right hand tired of holding up the mug and switched back when the left tapped out, too. Peter eventually tired, too, gesturing to set the mug aside when it was three-quarters empty.

"What's wrong with cherry?"

Peter cocked his head at the question, his brows furrowing a little at the strangeness of _Happy_ of all people voluntarily dragging out a conversation that didn't matter. Happy didn't budge. It was a little weird for him, too, but anything was better than that fragile silence. If the kid needed to talk to keep from sinking into it, then Happy was going to see that he talked.

"May hates it. Always brought me the grape cough syrup when I was little because she said the cherry was just cruel and unusual punishment if you were already sick." His voice stayed soft and a bit halting. But he talked.

"Yeah?" Happy picked up the mug again and nudged the kid's good shoulder to prompt another sip. "Thought you didn't get sick."

"Don't anymore. Not usually, anyway." And so it went. The words trickling out now were disjointed with post-drugs grogginess and a bit like pulling teeth since Happy had to put in more effort to keep them coming than he'd ever had to before, but he would take what he could get. Tony could do the heavy lifting when he got back, but for now, Happy would keep Peter talking. That was the important thing here, in the hazy hours of the morning after something so awful. He wasn't good at it. Probably never would be. But, Happy supposed, as he leaned back in his chair and watched the kid's posture loosen a little more with every word about his aunt's opinions on artificial flavors, it was the trying that mattered.

That, he could do.

Firstly, thank you all so much for the kind reviews! I appreciate every single of them. They make staying motivated to write so, so much easier! You're all too sweet! And secondly, this fic is now a series! A companion fic, "Friendly Neighborhood Intern," is now up on my profile if you're interested!


	9. Pass the Bowl

_**AN: Inspired by 1) the fact that I, like Peter, have been very sick since getting back from vacation (during which I did a fair bit of writing, luckily) and 2) is it just me or does the compound as seen in Homecoming seem like a much less hospitable place than it did in our previous glimpses of it?**_

Once upon a time, Happy had figured he was done holding sick buckets for vomiting passengers. Tony had sworn off the drinking and the partying for the most part, so the collapsible tub that had lived in the glovebox of each of his many cars had mostly just been gathering dust, much to Happy's satisfaction.

And now this...

He'd barely had time to scramble for the bowl and shove it under the kid's chin before Peter gagged up a shaky "sorry" along with the entire contents of his stomach. The only warning he'd gotten to pull over and haul the kid out of the backseat had been the greenish tinge to his face and a quiet "Think m'gonna be sick," punctuated by an ominous hiccup. Happy was just lucky he had enough experience with this sort of thing to see an incoming crisis before it spewed out.

"Why do you just..." Peter finally pulled back from the rim of the bowl and let his head thump weakly against the car behind him. "...have that? Just hanging out in the car, waiting for somebody to throw up in it."

"It's Tony's car. We got everything from emergency blankets to a spare welding kit. A sick bucket's nothing, kiddo." Happy kept the bowl close, just in case. He stayed crouched on the highway shoulder along with Peter, one hand on the back of his neck to shove him back into the bowl if necessary. Five more minutes would likely be enough time to determine whether Peter was ready to get back on the road...In the meantime, he could investigate.

"You said you don't get sick."

"I don't," Peter insisted, face sickly pale and clammy. Happy leveled him with a stern look, under which Peter's shoulders slumped. "Well, I _don't_. At least not so far..."

"First time for everything." Happy shifted his hand from Peter's neck to his forehead, one large palm half blocking Peter's eyes and drawing a sputter of protest that came out more like a whine. His face was hot, hotter than it should be, even in the first sparks of spring warmth. "How long you been feverish?"

Peter shrugged. "I felt weird when I woke up..."

"That long?" Happy quelled the urge to give the kid a good shake. "Why didn't you _say_ anything? We could've rescheduled!"

"I didn't think it would last. Figured it would go away—" He stopped short and gulped hard, as if holding back another wave of nausea. A tense moment passed before his shoulders loosened and he drew a deep breath. "I mean, bruises and stuff don't last more than a few hours, so why should a little cold?"

"A _flu_, at the very least." Happy sighed and dropped the hand away. It wasn't an ideal situation by any means. The original plan had been the same routine that played out every other week: drive the kid out to the compound, let him and Tony play with the tech for a few hours, then ferry him back to his aunt. Now, with an hour's worth of miles behind them and only another ten minutes to the compound, it seemed too late to turn around and forgo the plan entirely, but almost unthinkable to go ahead and deliver a sick kid to the sleek and sterile environment that was the remodeled Avengers' Base. Sure, they had the medbay, but that was set up for gunshot wounds and head traumas and the other grand scale injuries those morons kept bringing home. In the wake of the Berlin incident, the personnel quarters had been drastically pared down and the ones that remained were…less than homey. Happy doubted it would be a comfortable place to wait out a stomach flu. Still, their options were limited. "You wanna go home?"

Peter hesitated, the exhaustion on his face warring with the stubbornness in his eyes. "I... I can still do lab stuff, I think. I can nap the rest of the way, then maybe—"

"Uh-uh. That's not an option here, kid. You're gonna rest up, whether I drive you back to Queens now or whether I drive you to the compound where you can crash until we get ahold of your aunt." He knew May Parker was a nurse. It wasn't as though he'd had a lot of opportunities to chat with her, but the few conversations they'd had, he remembered. Presumably, she would know what to do with a sick kid.

Peter's brow furrowed and he opened his mouth as if to argue the point, but an ominous moan cut him off. He curled around the bowl again and gagged until the shudders turned to dry heaves. Happy patted his shoulder stiffly, not entirely sure what the proper course of action was for comfort in this situation, but sure he should be doing _something_.

"Yeah, never mind. We're going to the compound." He wasn't going to bundle the kid back into the backseat for another hour's worth of hugging a bowl in a moving car. They'd figure out what to do with him at the compound once they got there. He slid an arm around Peter's shoulders and eased him to his feet in an easy motion he'd long since perfected for minimal jostling; Tony had always appreciated it during his hangovers. "C'mon...let's get you off your feet."

He settled the kid in the front seat with the bowl propped between his knees and all of the vents pouring cool air at his flushed face. He waited for the inevitable awed comments about being allowed into the revered shotgun seat and frowned when he was met with dull silence. Peter hung his head over the bowl and pursed his lips as if he didn't even notice where he was sitting. Happy took that as a sign to floor it the rest of the way to the compound. The sooner the kid was settled and resting, the better.

By the time Happy pulled up to the curb along the front of the compound, Peter had shifting from sweltering to shivering. He apologized as he tottered out of the car, clinging to Happy's arm like a lifeline while the older man fished in his pockets for his keycard.

"Stop that," Happy ordered as he tucked the bowl under one arm (carefully right side up) and Peter under the other to march them both up to the doors. The bowl was more of a precaution now. There had been no more episodes since Peter's last round of dry heaves, the gags giving away to a sniffly nose and hoarse voice, but Happy wanted to keep it close just in case that changed. "I've been getting paid to babysit Tony in much worse shape than this for longer than you've been alive; it's nothing new, kiddo."

That wrung a shaky giggle out of Peter, and he clung to Happy all the more tightly as they walked. It still took longer than it should have to reach the communal living space and plunk Peter on the couch. The kid wobbled on his feet like a drunk fawn all the way down the hall and up the elevator, dredging up a good many unpleasant memories for Happy. Still, he managed an equally wobbly smile as he sat trembling on the couch.

"Thanks, Happy."

Happy glanced around, casting for anything remotely useful in the cold efficiency the place had become after the split. Most of the things that had made the place livable had vanished along with Steve and the rest of the group; Tony didn't like reminders. Normally, Happy wasn't bothered one way or the other, but he would've killed for a decent throw or a soft duvet at the moment. He grumbled under his breath and shucked off his suit jacket to wind it around Peter's shoulders. "Yeah, yeah...just stay put for a minute. I gotta go make a call."

He moved to slip back out of the room for the privacy to call May for guidance, but a shaky hand caught on his sleeve and stuck. Happy glanced down sharply to find Peter still holding onto him, eyes dull with discomfort, but still wide and much younger than they usually seemed. Happy's shoulders sagged. He couldn't blame the kid. Being sick for the first time in two years, particularly once you thought it was impossible to get sick had to be unnerving.

"Okay…Calling from here, then." He perched on the couch at Peter's side and reached for his phone with the arm not surrendered to the clingy kid next to him.

"What's this? We just skipping the actual work portion of lab day today or—" Tony's voice bounced off the empty walls as he sauntered up from the lab he had apparently been waiting in, but he froze a few steps away, eyes sharpening as he zeroed in on Peter. "Kid? What's going on with you? You aren't as bright-eyed and chatty as usual."

"Kid's sick," Happy piped up around the phone pressed to his ear. Dial tone was ringing, once, twice, three times. Tony's brow creased, and Happy could all but hear the thoughts rushing in. Since when did Peter who Did Not Get Sick actually _get sick_? Was it serious? Was it an attack of some sort? What could Tony do to fix it? That was where Happy's exact knowledge ended since he couldn't follow the exact imaginings of diagnostics and treatments and solutions that were probably already whirling through Tony's head, but—knowing Tony—he was sure they were there. He was _relieved_ they were there, seeing as how he'd already done all he could do. Someone else would have to handle the real fixes.

"Ah. You look it, too." Tony settled on the couch on Peter's other side, close enough to knock a knee against Peter's as he reached over to press a hand against his cheek. He winced and let out a low whistle. "You never do anything half-way, do you, Underoos?"

Peter gave a rueful half-smile and burrowed deeper into Happy's suit coat. It swallowed him with shoulders twice as broad as his own and a girth meant to accomodate Happy's...robust...physique, but he didn't seem to mind since that meant there was more material to huddle in. A hint of recognition flashed in Tony's eyes and he tweaked the nearest lapel with a barely contained smirk. A fond smirk, but a smirk nonetheless as he shot Happy a look over Peter's hunched shoulders. Happy resolutely looked away, taking May's cheery "hello?" as an opportunity to extricate himself with a final pat to Peter's sweaty hand before he strode a few yards down the hall to explain the situation in relative quiet. It didn't take long to hash out a plan; May Parker was nothing, if not capable.

Peter would stay here for the time being, well within reach of the compound's Medbay and physicians in case whatever bug he'd caught turned out to be something more serious. May would just come to them. Happy offered to drive up and get her—he never minded chauffeuring her on the few occasions he had the opportunity, although he could do without Peter's groaning over the fact that he let_ her_ ride in the front if she chose to—but she had declined, preferring to keep him close to Peter just in case he was needed. Happy didn't mind that option, either. Staying close meant that keeping an eye on the situation was that much easier. And he always felt better with a close eye on things.

When he returned to the living area, Peter was curled into Tony's side, head tucked firmly under his chin and Tony's arm looped around him like a shield. Happy could hear the older man murmuring something soft and reassuring but couldn't quite pick up the words. That was just as well, he supposed. The situation looked perfectly under control for the moment. It had worried him at first. The idea of Peter staying _here_ while he was sick and miserable, even if his aunt was eventually going to show up to help look after him, had seemed almost cruel. It wasn't a home anymore. Or at least, it hadn't seemed that way in a very long while.

Now, looking at the way the tension seemed to have melted out of Peter completely as he relaxed against Tony, he supposed hominess was a relative thing that had far less to do with stuff than it did with good company. He turned away again and went off to scour the remaining personnel quarters for blankets and a pillow or two—they were always nicer than the ones in the medbay—he could appropriate. If it turned out the kid wasn't in any real danger, they could probably just stick him in one of those rooms and be done with it, but in the meantime, Happy was going to be sure he was comfortable. It might even get him his suit jacket back. But if it didn't, Happy couldn't say that he minded. It wasn't, after all, the stuff that mattered.


	10. Ride Shotgun

"Where's your sidekick?" Happy didn't waste any time when Peter slid into the backseat, having clearly watched him come down the walk from Midtown's east exit sans Ned.

"He drove home. Got his license last week." Peter grinned at the memory of Ned bouncing giddily up and down as he showed off the freshly printed card. He was the first of their class group aside from Flash to reach the coveted milestone, and Ned was nothing if not enthusiastic about milestones. "His mom lets him take her minivan on days when he can pick up his sisters from dance."

Happy's brow puckered. "Ned's younger than you, isn't he?"

"How on earth do you know _that_?" Peter muttered as he dug a stack of notes from his bag and sifted through them to find an assignment he could knock out on the drive to the compound. He knew Happy paid more attention to his rambling than the man let on, but remembering the four months' lead he had on Ned was flat-out impressive.

"Contrary to popular belief, I do occasionally listen to things," Happy shot back before throwing him a skeptical glance in the rearview mirror. "So? If your buddy's got his license, where's yours? What am I doing still driving you everywhere, huh?"

"First off: it's super touching that you know when my birthday is, let alone Ned's."

Happy rolled his eyes, drawing a snicker from Peter. His birthday a few months earlier had coincided with a lab day, and while Happy hadn't exactly _admitted_ that that had had anything to do with the pitstop they'd made for doughnuts, Peter had his suspicions.

"Secondly: why? You trying to get rid of me, Happy?"

"As if I could get that lucky. I stopped doing most of Tony's driving years ago, and we're still stuck with each other," Happy grumbled, his tone at odds with the fondness in his eyes.

Peter chortled and went back to the calculus spread over his knees until Happy cleared his throat again.

"So? When are you gonna go get that license?"

Peter shrugged, the uneasy feeling in his gut that appeared whenever anyone pushed that question tightening a smidge. It wasn't that he didn't plan to get his license…eventually. It was just that he had better things to do and more interesting things to concentrate on. With all the public transport New York had to offer at his fingertips—not to mention an infinitely more fun way to travel if he chose to put on the mask—why stress about something as mundane as driving? Particularly since his experiences with it so far had been less than stellar.

"I dunno…whenever I get enough hours on my permit, I guess." Which, at the rate he was going, would probably be sometime in his mid-twenties. "May doesn't have a lot of time to let me drive her around parking lots, though, so don't get your hopes up about losing chauffeur duty anytime soon."

"Hmm." Happy's face took on a contemplative look. "You got that permit with you now?"

"Yeah…" Peter halted mid-way through a lazily sketched-out equation to give Happy a quizzical stare. His spider-senses weren't tingling, but the sense of foreboding prickling at the back of his mind was just as concerning. A contemplative Happy usually meant there was a bright idea in the offing, and Happy's bright ideas nearly always meant more work for Peter in one way or another. "Why?"

"No reason…Don't worry about it."

Peter didn't worry too much until Happy pulled off the pavement just beyond the compound's first security checkpoint. The man had threatened to make him walk on more than one occasion (most recently after he'd spent half the drive humming the melody of Happy's namesake song in retaliation for a crack about his height), but he didn't think he'd done anything particularly annoying this trip. Nor had he expected Happy to ever actually follow through on any of his threats.

"Happy?...Whatcha doing?"

"I'm getting you those hours." Happy shuffled out of his seat, pausing to hover at the doorframe when he realized that Peter hadn't budged. "Front and center, Parker—we've got half an hour before Tony expects you in the lab and a bunch of road you don't have to share with those maniacs on the highway."

Peter gaped. "I—what?"

"You, front seat, _now._" Happy spun an impatient hand in the air and dropped into the passenger seat. Peter brushed his homework aside and ventured cautiously up front. This had to be a mistake. A joke, maybe, though Happy wasn't usually the type for that.

"Are you…sure?" Peter settled gingerly into the driver's seat, but stayed poised to hop back out. There was no way Happy would actually risk a vehicle from the Stark fleet by putting in _Peter's _hands. Even if he'd considered it for a moment, had acted on some crazy charitable impulse—surely he had to come to his senses any second now, right?

"Kid, if you don't buckle in and start driving in the next ten seconds, you're gonna walk the rest of the way to the lab—that sure enough for you? Don't make me change my mind."

Peter complied, fumbling his seatbelt into place and groaning over how long it took to pull the seat up to accommodate his shorter legs. Finally, he could rest his hands on the steering wheel. It felt different than May's aging sedan, if only in the knowledge that one car was already on its last legs and the other cost more than Peter could wrap his head around. He gulped, mouth suddenly dry as a bone, and drummed his fingers against the fine leather beneath his fingertips as he stalled on actually putting the thing in gear.

There was a sigh from the seat next to him.

"Peter. Relax. Even if you screw up a little, there's nothing out here for you to hit. Besides, you've got that thing." Happy reached over to lightly flick Peter's ear, as if that was where the spider-sense resided. "With the senses? Even if there was something, you'd know, yeah?"

"Not always. Sometimes it doesn't kick in in time," Peter muttered, the image of Flash's battered convertible springing to mind. Technically speaking, he'd crashed fifty percent of the cars he'd driven—he had the feeling Happy wouldn't like those odds if he knew.

Peter had a hard time feeling very remorseful for that particular accident, especially since he'd wrecked the car in the line of duty and Flash's father had replaced it without comment by the following week. This, on the other hand, was Mr. Stark's car. Scratch that—it was _Happy's_ car, if you judged it by the number of hours spent on it: Peter had never seen that vehicle in any state other than washed, waxed, and vacuumed perfection, and he'd stake his life on Happy being personally responsible for every inch of polished metal. Even if Mr. Stark's name was the one on the title, it was Happy's baby. And Peter was about to get stuck driving it. He could feel the sweat beading up on the back of his neck already.

"Still better reflexes than mine, and I haven't so much as scratched the paint in years." Happy clapped Peter on the shoulder, flashing the stiff grimace of a smile he seemed to think was reassuring. "If I can do it, there's no reason Spider-Man can't."

"I crashed Flash Thompson's car on Homecoming night," Peter blurted. He screwed his eyes shut the second the last syllable crossed his lips. Stupid, _stupid_ mouth. It always found a way to get away from him when he needed to reign it in the most.

"You…what?" Happy looked at him blankly for a full twenty seconds as he processed the admission. A thoughtful wrinkle appeared between his eyes. "Flash. That the twerp I had to yell at in the pick-up line? With the convertible?"

"It's his second one."

"Because you crashed the first one," Happy repeated slowly, eying Peter with a skepticism that made him want to burrow into the cushy leather and hide. He couldn't seem to decide which question to lead with. "Why? Wha—_How_ did you crash some other kid's car?"

"I…um…needed it," Peter twiddled his thumbs at the top of the steering wheel and focused on looking at anything besides Happy's face. "To follow Toomes. And Flash hates me, but he's kind of a huge Spider-Man fan—seriously, it's ridiculous—so he let me commandeer it—"

Happy snorted, but Peter forged on before he could comment on the word choice. 'Commandeer' sounded a lot better than 'stole," and Peter was focusing on damage control.

"—and I drove it the whole time I was tracking Toomes, but I'd only practiced with May a couple times before that, so I really, really sucked. Like I ran over a bunch of bicycles and drove in the wrong lane a lot and I almost hit a _bus_, and then I took a corner too fast and flipped the car on its side for like thirty feet and…yeah." Peter sucked in a breath to make up for all the ones he'd missed. He let his head fall forward to thump against the center of the wheel. "I don't like driving."

Silence fell, overlaid by the steady purr of the engine and heavy with Peter's unease about the whole thing. He and Happy didn't talk about Homecoming. Ever. It was awkward for both of them and—apart from that one brief discussion of how much Happy owed Peter one—they both steered clear of it. He had certainly never planned to explain any of the details, least of all the ones he considered the most humiliating. Sure, he'd picked up a lot of hurt and fear and general trauma from that night, but stealing and crashing a car fell into a totally different category. And while embarrassment didn't exactly rank as high as recurring nightmares or lingering discomfort in small spaces, Peter didn't find it any less annoying.

Peter was yanked out of his stewing by a strangled sound he couldn't quite identify. He had tipped his head sideways to make sure Happy wasn't having a conniption when he caught it again: a muffled snicker.

"It's not _funny_," Peter snapped. Happy shook his head in agreement, but made no effort to hide the bemused half-smile on his face.

"I know, I know…I'm just trying to get over the image of you stealing a car from the same idiot who keeps trying to run you down in it."

"_Happy._" Peter was not accustomed to being on this side of the stop-laughing equation; he didn't care for it.

"And the idea of you stealing a car at all…" Happy's shoulders shook with a tamped-down chuckle. "Tony know about this?"

"Yeah, I told him." Unlike Happy, Tony was nosy enough to push for the whole run-down of events. He'd smirked through the entirety of that part of the story, chortling like a madman at Peter's recreation of the gravelly voice he'd put on to 'borrow' the ill-fated car. Peter was glad of that at the time, given the somber mood that came with the next part of the tale, but since he wouldn't be telling Happy about getting buried under a few tons of steel and concrete, he was not glad of this. He reached for the door handle and moved to shoulder his way out of the front seat.

"You know, I really appreciate the offer, Happy, but I'm good. I think I'm just going to stick to the subway. Like…forever. It's fine, really. Thanks, anyway."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa—" Happy snagged Peter by the sleeve and reeled him back in. "No, it's not. Subway's good for day to day, but what happens next time you have to…ah…_commandeer_ a car?"

"I dunno—maybe I'll commandeer a driver, too."

Happy let out a harrumph. "You've already got one of those; you don't need any more. What you do need is practice. And that license."

Peter scuffed a shoe against the floormat and frowned. Logically, he knew all that already. It wasn't something he could avoid forever. Not in his chosen line of work. He'd just been putting it off as long as he could. But of course—given his skill at ruining Peter's fun—Happy just had to burst his bubble. The man in question cleared his throat to catch Peter's attention again, and Peter cast a grudging glance his direction.

"Okay, I shouldn't have laughed, but you know I'm right. C'mon," Happy's voice softened a notch and he knocked a fist against Peter's shoulder in what passed as an apology. "You've got an open road, a good car, an expert teacher—"

Peter snorted, earning himself a warning glower.

"There's no safer place to learn enough to make sure you don't crash the next car you steal."

"_Commandeer._"

"Sure, kid." Happy rolled his eyes again and settled back into his seat, tugging at his seatbelt for a more secure fit. "Now, drive—you're down to twenty minutes before Tony starts getting antsy. Sounds like we need to make the most of it."

"Rude." Peter shot him an offended look, but took his place back behind the wheel with a little less terror anyway. Happy had a point. Sooner or later, he'd have to give in and get some practice under his belt. Might as well be here in the middle of nowhere, where there were no tight corners and much lower odds of getting run over by a bus. It didn't seem quite as intimidating here. And, he supposed as he tentatively inched the car into gear under Happy's watchful gaze…he could do worse for a teacher.

_**AN: Thank you all so much for the kind comments! They always make my day! 3**_

_**As of right now, there's one more chapter planned out for this fic and one more for its companion fic before I'm done with the one-shot ideas I started with. At that point, I'll likely mark them complete until inspiration strikes again, but if anyone has prompts or ideas they're interested in seeing, feel free to drop me a line here or on Tumblr at friendlyneighborhoodsecretary.**_


	11. Take the Stairs

Happy had never thought the elevators in any of the Stark buildings were particularly small. Tony rarely invested in anything but the best, after all, and the sleek, steel-paneled elevators that bridged his penthouse and the rest of the building were no exception. Or at least, they hadn't been when Happy was only spending a reasonable amount of time in them. After a day spent buzzing up and down between R&D and the penthouse to coordinate deliveries, to check in with security to smooth over the details of Pepper's impending return from her latest business trip, and now to run the kid up to Tony, Happy was well and truly sick of them.

Particularly now, when the elevator he stood in had shuddered to a shaky halt between floors eight and nine and refused to move an inch in the twenty minutes since then.

He supposed it could be blamed on the weather, given that the storm raging outside had already bumped two shipments and three system upgrades from the day's schedule. Still, it was inconvenient at best and downright disruptive at worst. Happy scowled at nothing in particular and jammed a finger over the emergency call button again, just because he needed to do something productive. It was embarrassing, really. With what appeared to be power outages throughout the building, not even FRIDAY was responding. Washed-out roads and glitchy electronics were one thing, but broken elevators were an all-time low for a company meant to be producing the best tech in the business.

"You know, I could totally climb out and take a look at what's going on," Peter piped up from where he'd been pacing his side of their narrow little box, already tossing his backpack aside to eye the hatch in the ceiling.

"Don't even _think_ about it! Pick that up before you trip over it—" Happy nudged the discarded backpack with his shoe and dropped a heavy hand on Peter's shoulder to anchor him firmly on the ground. "—and sit tight. I'm not having you go up there and then having to explain things to Tony when you end up getting squished by a moving elevator."

Peter sputtered an offended string of reasons why he "totally wouldn't get squished," which Happy pointedly ignored as he pulled out his phone in hopes of some reply to the increasingly urgent messages he'd sent out a few moments earlier. A few auto-reply emails from maintenance scrolled across the screen, but no ETA for a rescue was forthcoming. Happy stowed the phone and frowned. He was going to have to have a word with them about response time once he got out of this, but in the meantime, all they could do was wait.

"Stop that," Happy grumbled idly as Peter lapsed back into sullen silence and began spinning the lanyard that held his all-access security badge around his index finger, letting it coil up tight then unfurling it to do the same again in the opposite direction. "If you keep playing with it, you're just gonna lose it somewhere, then I'll have to get you a new one. Again."

Peter lost badges even faster than he lost backpacks, but Happy kept printing them and shoving them into the kid's hands whenever they happened to end up at the penthouse or one of the other SI facilities rather than the compound. It was usually a moot point since he was nearly always there to escort Peter wherever he needed to go, but Happy stood on principle: he would _not_ have the one and only junior intern on the payroll being the only person allowed to get away with not using a badge (the favoritism claims were high enough as it was). Even if all the kid ever seemed to use it for was fidgeting.

He seemed even more jittery today than usual, Happy noted, as Peter only stopped long enough to switch the lanyard to the other hand and start the routine over. He wondered briefly if that could be pinned on the weather, too. He'd once dated a teacher who claimed that her kids practically climbed the walls when rainy days kept them cooped up indoors. Granted, he would've expected that kind of antsiness to come with a deluge of chatter while Peter had been abnormally subdued, but perhaps the high school version just differed from the elementary one. Happy sagged against the wall and sighed. Either way, he was thankful for small mercies.

With Peter staying quiet and the usual whoosh and hum of the elevator silenced, the weather outside seemed much closer. Every so often, the building would rattle in time with a crash of thunder from overhead and the steady wash of the rain sluicing down the side of the building did little to insulate them from the rumble and boom. Happy glowered at the ceiling as if that would make them start moving again through sheer force of will. Another crash echoed overhead, and the lights flickered, as if in some sort of cosmic defiance to Happy's plans.

"Oh, come on..." The overheads wavered for another split second before winking out, leaving them in the dim glow of the red emergency lights. Happy sighed and thumped a fist against the handrail. Perfect. Just _perfect_. Being stuck was exasperating enough, but being stuck in the dark was the cherry on a crap sundae.

Wrapped up as he was in his own frustration, it took a moment for Happy to notice the odd little wheeze coming from somewhere to his right, but only half a second to realize that it was coming from the kid. It was difficult to make out all the details in the dim light, but it was abundantly clear that something had gone wrong. Peter's breathing had gone strange and taunt. He twitched at noises Happy couldn't hear and eyed the ceiling overhead as if it would crumble in on him any second.

"Hey. Hey, hey, hey—what's going on? Kid?" He realized his own voice was rising as he spoke and cut off abruptly. If what he thought was happening was indeed happening, panic from _him_ wouldn't help. Granted, it was possible that Peter's sixth sense was kicking in to warn them of some horrendous elevator malfunction, but…Happy had never seen him approach a real emergency with even a reasonable (or sensible) amount of fear. The kid had an uncanny ability to shove terror aside for competence when he needed it. No, this looked like something else entirely. Something Happy was, unfortunately, just as familiar with.

"M'fine." Peter had retreated to the center of the elevator, putting as much space between himself and the walls as he could. "Just...not crazy about enclosed spaces."

Happy narrowed his eyes at him. This was the first he'd heard of it. And for a kid who talked as much as Peter Parker, that wasn't a great sign. Happy hovered a few feet away, watching the way the kid's fists clenched and unclenched with white-knuckle tension with a heavy heart and a gnawing sense of helplessness writhing in his chest. It was the worst kind of déjà vu. He'd seen enough of Tony's panic attacks to recognize the symptoms a mile away. The wide, hollow eyes and shallow breaths, the haunted expression of someone a million miles deep in their own nightmares—it wasn't a look he ever expected to see the kid wear. Nor was it a look he knew what to do with. Sure, he knew the steps to talk an adult down from the proverbial ledge, but surely handling a panicking baby superhero had to be different than handling a grown one. Softer, maybe. Or more sympathetic. Happy pursed his lips and frowned. He was none of those things. But the kid was clearly struggling…Happy squared his shoulders and stepped closer. Experience or no experience, they'd just have to make do.

"Take a breath—no, a good, deep one," Happy demonstrated with an exaggerated inhale. "And let it back out slow."

Peter stared at him as if he'd gone over the deep end and kept sucking in ragged breaths that hurt to listen to until Happy settled a hand on each of his shoulders. He moved slowly, half-braced for a reflexive blow that would _definitely_ hurt coming from a boy who could bend steel when he felt like it, but Peter just flinched. It was better than the time Tony had accidentally taken a swing at him in the throes of a full-blown panic, Happy supposed, but it wasn't any easier to see.

"C'mon, kid. In…and out."

Peter grappled with his own respiration for a moment before finally pulling in a breath that Happy found satisfactory.

"Good. Again," Happy ordered. He let his grip on Peter's shoulders relax a little as the risk of the kid hyperventilating himself into a faint lessened, but he didn't let go. After another five minutes of careful, measured breaths, the terror rolling off the kid began to ebb. Happy barely resisted the urge to heave a sigh of relief himself, instead clearing his throat as if that would clear the air along with it. The atmosphere was charged now, awkward in the knowledge that Happy had seen something Peter clearly tried to secret away and heavy with Peter's discomfort at being found out. Seconds ticked into minutes before Happy found as delicate a way as he knew to phrase things.

"So... This is new, yeah? Stress from your—" Happy shot a glance at the tiny camera perched in the elevator's upper corner. The footage didn't go anywhere outside of the SI archives, but there was no sense taking any risks. "—internship?"

"Nah, man. I've had this since...well. Since right after the bite." Peter snorted, his voice and posture still taunt. Coiled tight as a lanyard around a fingertip. "I mean, there's more stuff to…um…_stress_ over since the internship, but…Yeah. Not new."

"Does Tony know?" Happy doubted it. If Tony did know, he'd probably be fretting over _that _along with his usual helicoptering about everything else Happy passed along about the kid. And probably internalizing a whole new mountain of guilt over the idea of the kid carrying around the same burden he did. Happy almost wished he didn't have to find out. Or even better, that there was nothing to find out in the first place.

Peter shook his head, shoulders drooping a little with the admission. Happy cleared his throat again, biting back the worry over what that hesitation meant. Of all the things the kid could choose to keep to himself, why did he always have to pick the ones that would hurt him in the long run? It was damn frustrating for someone whose job revolved around keeping him safe.

"He's got...stress, too, you know. You ought to talk to him."

"If I don't, are you going to?"

Happy sighed. Sympathy for Tony aside, he didn't like the idea of playing the messenger for something so personal—especially if Peter himself refused to mention it—but it was too large a problem to ignore. Looking out for Peter and reporting accordingly was an increasingly large chunk of his job. And he meant to do it well. Not just because Tony cared more about whether Peter was getting home before midnight every night than he did about ninety-nine percent of Happy's other responsibilities…but because _Happy_ did, too. "You know that's my job."

There was a beat of quiet before Peter's face scrunched up in a resigned sort of grimace. "Snitch."

Happy let out a snort. That was more like it…It might not have Peter's usual sunny delivery, but at least a hint of the sass was back.

"_Professional _snitch, and don't you forget it," Happy said, punctuating it with a gruff stab of an index finger before his voice softened a tic. "I got my eye on you, you know."

It was the same line he'd delivered a million times over the course of his role as Asset Manager. But somewhere along the line, it had become more of a promise than a threat. Peter cracked a muted smile.

"Yeah, Happy, I know…it's only the five hundredth time you've said it."

Happy opened his mouth to retort, but was cut short by the lights blazing back to life overhead and the elevator itself groaning back into a steady climb. Peter squinted against the sudden onslaught of brightness while Happy grabbed for the railing to steady himself against the abrupt movement.

"_Finally!"_ Peter breathed, bouncing on his heels as if he might just launch himself through the ceiling before they even finished their ascent. Happy snagged him by the collar again (just in case) to steer him through the double doors the second they opened into the penthouse. Where he landed directly in an unsuspecting Tony's arms.

"Here, handle this—I got a maintenance guy to go yell at," Happy said in lieu of explanation as he shouldered past, rather relieved to be free of those four walls himself.

"Hey, excuse me, I was expecting delivery in the thirty minutes or less—I feel like there should be some sort of refund here." Tony slung an arm around Peter's shoulders anyway, his eyes sharpening as he glanced between Peter and Happy. Peter's face was still too pale and his smile a little too stilted. More than enough evidence to tip Tony off that all was not well. Knowing those two, a bit of cautious interrogation would be all that it would take to get Peter to spill his guts, and that would be that.

Happy sighed, some of the weight rolling off his shoulders as he headed for the stairs (he wasn't taking any chances with the elevator) to storm the maintenance offices. He could already pick up the soft murmur of Tony's inquisitive voice as he exited. If Tony was on it, Peter would be fine. Maybe not right away and maybe not entirely, but…as fine as someone with a job like his could be. Tony would make sure of it. _They'd_ make sure of it. And until he was—and after, for that matter, Happy would keep an eye on him.

_**AN: That's all (for now), folks! More one-shots may be added if inspiration strikes at a later date, but for now, I'm marking this complete to focus on a few other fics that should be coming within the next few weeks! Thank you all so very much for reading and commenting throughout this journey! You've all been so incredibly kind and encouraging, and I can't even begin to give an adequate thank you!**_


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